Islamophobia functions as a transnational tool advancing American imperial aims

Evidence

A central text frequently cited in The New Crusades is Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, by Deepa Kumar. Originally published by Haymarket Books in 2012 and republished by Verso in 2021 with a new preface, “20 Years after 9/11,” the book frames Islamophobia as an imperial project spearheaded by the United States and its War on Terror. This thesis, which holds that the demonization of Muslim identity is a transnational tool wielded to facilitate American imperial aims, is echoed in my work and adapted in my framing of Islamophobia as deeply structural and pointedly “rational”—namely, an expedient to advance and entrench American political interests both at home, and as Kumar examines, in Muslim-majority nations. Kumar is not a Critical Race Theorist like myself, but race is central to her argument and analysis. She writes, “My key argument is that notions of race and Muslims as inferior beings could come to the fore in a context where European nations were in a position to actually challenge and eventually dominate once-powerful Muslim empires” (p. 20), evoking the modernity of Islamophobia and its roots in longstanding Crusades-era narratives (which in part inspired the title of my book). Kumar’s book is a foundational interdisciplinary academic text, steeped in her area of research, media studies. It remains the most important text on Islamophobia as a transnational project, leveraged to advance American empire, today. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1826

The Rise of Global Islamophobia in the War on Terror, published by Manchester University Press in 2022, builds on Kumar’s work and echoes the thesis that Islamophobia is an imperial project. Edited by Naved Bakali and Farid Hafez, the book offers a timely treatment of Islamophobia from a collection of scholars and non-academics. Reflecting the international status of the editors and authors, the book expands the bounds of previous volumes geographically, examining Islamophobia as it has unfolded in countries including India and China and in Muslim-majority societies, primarily adopting the framing that Islamophobia is a political weapon employed by the United States—and its proxies—to access and maximize political gain. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1829

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to the reader’s stated paired reading of Iftikhar’s book for the global-synthesis view — Kumar is the scholarly anchor for exactly that transnational-empire thesis. — connects to: States across the power spectrum weaponize Islamophobia for national and imperial projects — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 79; Islamophobia networks are structurally integral to US empire — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 89; Weak states, subempires, and European far-right parties all weaponize Islamophobia independent of US empire — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 91 (+4 more)
• ADDENDUM: The theme of Islamophobia as a calculated, ‘rational’ political instrument parallels the mechanism in ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ where moral panics serve class/identity/political signaling.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1826; Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1829